A widow of Zarephath

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” … Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there, for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”

1 Kings 17:1, 8-9, from 1 Kings 17 [NRSVUE]

Elijah springs into the narrative fully formed, as if we’re expected to know who he is without ever having been formally introduced. Ahab we know. Ahab was introduced by lineage and title: he’s son of Omri and now king over Israel (1 Kings 16:29). Ahab’s reign is ‘evil’ (16:30), not least for his having married a foreign princess and for worshiping foreign gods (16:31-33).

Elijah is unknown. He appears suddenly, challenges the king with the LORD’s judgment of drought (17:1), then hides himself away, according to the LORD’s word (17:2-4). The text follows Elijah as a camera might — first to the wadi, where he will be sustained by ravens; then to Zarephath, where he will be sustained by a widow — yet that close focus is both framed by the larger faithlessness and adds a different light to it. Elijah’s sojourn in Zarephath is not a pause in the action but an action that recasts the story as a whole, resisting rigid definitions of fidelity by showing openness to encounter.

Drought has ultimate consequences. Its effect stretches beyond Israel’s borders. An intermittent wadi and the kindness of ravens sustain Elijah at the start of the drought, but soon the wadi is dry (17:6) and the LORD sends Elijah out of Israel, to a town in Sidon, the kingdom from which Ahab’s wife had come. ‘I have commanded a widow to feed you,’ says the LORD, an echo of the earlier word ‘I have commanded ravens to feed you’ (17:9, 5).

Elijah rises and walks and goes in to the gate of the city. And — see! — a widow is there. She is gathering sticks to make a small fire to bake cakes of the last of her meal to eat with her son before the both of them die (17:12). Like the Israelites in the wilderness, this woman expects death. Her plan is not to avoid the doom but to measure its arrival. Instead, a different destiny arrives and calls to her; this fate asks for a drink of water, asks for a morsel of bread (17:10-11).

Who is the guest here, and who is the host?

Elijah is the supplicant; he comes from away, is recognized as foreign. The widow is of the place. She is mistress (‘ba’alah’) of a household (17:15, 17), a house with an upper room in which is a bed for Elijah’s use (17:17-19). She is of the place while Elijah knows himself but a sojourner, reminds the LORD he is ‘dwelling as alien and dependent,’ as the lexicon defines the verb Elijah uses in his prayer (17:20).

Yet ‘the word of the LORD in [Elijah’s] mouth is truth’ (17:24). The word to the LORD from Elijah’s mouth brings life (17:22). The presence of Elijah in that particular house leads to its sustaining: the jug and the jar are not exhausted, and the household eats many days (17:15). Elijah is there by the widow’s sufferance; she is sustained by his sojourning. Elijah receives life through the widow’s hand (17:11); he returns life through his own body and voice, calling on the LORD to make full Elijah’s initial word and return life to the boy (17:19-22).

Who receives, here, and who gives? Who, in giving, receives. And who, receiving, realizes that a gift has been given?

The story resists the binaries, the false opposition of either/or, in favor of a shifting perspective that sees in each a guest, in each a host, in both of them an exchange of receiving that gives life. The story stretches the categories, allowing each participant to stand separate even as each bends towards the other. ‘As the LORD your God lives’ the woman says to Elijah, an oath that connects to Elijah’s commitment without claiming it as her own. Even at the end of the story, when Elijah returns to her her again-living son, she does not say that the LORD is her God. She says that Elijah is a man of God (17:23-24). Maybe this, too, is her gift to Elijah, a reminder of God’s power and Elijah’s authority, before Elijah is called to show himself to the king (18:1).

We live in a season of division. Categories are rigid. Compromise is anathema. Consensus is the impossible dream of a naive idealist. Conversation, even, is suspect as potentially undermining conflicting claims of purity. Battle lines are drawn, opposing ground is trenched, each side is dug in.

But the LORD sent Elijah across a boundary. To be a stranger seeking sustenance; to be a stranger giving grace. To talk together and to eat together and for three years abide in the same household, sharing the domestic particulars in which the ideal is enfleshed. To stand sure in who and whose you are (Elijah’s name means ‘my God is the LORD’) while bending towards the other enough to learn of them, and of them to learn yourself, and something more of God.

That God’s power stretches across borders. That God’s good is not constrained by creeds. That God wills and works life in ways that confound our categories.

May we be drawn into encounter that shifts our perspective, shows us God, shares God’s love.